80 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. I. 



we cannot "imagine an object apart from the conditions 

 under which we know it. We are forced by the laws of our 

 nature to invest objects with tbe forms in which we perceive 

 them. We cannot therefore conceive anything which has 

 not been subject to the laws of our nature, because in the 

 very act of conception those laws come into play." 1 But 

 when the idealist proceeds to infer that because we cannot 

 conceive objects otherwise, therefore they cannot exist other- 

 wise, he assumes that knowledge is absolute, and thus knocks 

 away the psychological basis upon which his premise was 

 founded. If we would consistently refrain from violating 

 the doctrine of relativity, we must state the idealist's pre- 

 mise, but avoid his conclusion. We admit that " the trees 

 and mountains you imagine to exist away from any perceiv- 

 ing mind " do not really exist as trees and mountains except 

 in relation to some perceiving mind. We admit that matter 

 does not exist as matter, save in relation to our intelligence ; 

 since what we mean by matter is a congeries of qualities — 

 weight, resistance, extension, colour, etc. — which have been 

 severally proved to be merely names for divers ways in which 

 our consciousness is affected by an unknown external agency. 

 Take away all these qualities, and we freely admit, with the 

 idealist, that the matter is gone ; for by matter we mean, 

 with the idealist, the phenomenal thing which is seen, tasted, 

 and felt. But we nevertheless maintain, in opposition to the 

 idealist, that something is still there, which, to some possible 

 mode of impressibility quite different from conscious intel- 

 ligence, might manifest itself as something wholly dif- 

 ferent from, and incomparable with, matter; but which, 

 to anything that can be called conscious intelligence, 

 must manifest itself as matter. We freely admit that 

 what we mean by a tree is merely a congeries of quali- 

 ties that are visual and tactual, and perhaps odorous, sapid, 

 or sonorous. If we were destitute of sight, touch, smell, 



1 Lewes, History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 302. 



